“I want to write something new, something extraordinary and ...

y that. I understand that there’s a love there, but there’s also something deeper
about the culture of money.”
Despite Daisy’s unhappiness, Mulligan points out that there is more than
meets the eye when it comes to her relationship with Tom. “Daisy and Tom have
such a great dynamic. When they walk into a room, they know they are the most
powerful people there because of their wealth and status,” she says. “There is a
reason they are together and a reason that they were, at one point, really in love.
So, that’s what we had fun playing with. I think it’s really easy to make them an
unhappy couple, but they’re not necessarily.”
Luhrmann found the part of Tom difficult to cast. “Honestly, all sorts of actors
wanted to play that role, but finding exactly the right quality was really hard,” he
says. “Joel is a talented young Aussie guy, and he was coming in to read for Tom
Buchanan, but I cannot say that I thought at the time, ‘Well, that’ll be a slam-dunk.’
But from the moment Joel walked in until the moment he left, he was Tom
Buchanan.”
Edgerton was so immersed in his character that he continued using his upperclass
American accent on set, long after the cameras stopped rolling. Luhrmann
recalls, “I forgot what Joel Edgerton—the guy who has the Aussie accent that I know
well—sounded like, and I really think it would be very hard to find anyone who won’t
see the Tom Buchanan that is on the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
in the interpretation that Joel found, because he’s boorish and you love to hate him.
But he has his own kind of moral universe. And to that he is faithful. As Nick says, ‘I
couldn't forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely
justified.’ It’s both complex and entertaining.”
“Fitzgerald said Tom Buchanan was one of the best characters he ever
created,” adds Doug Wick. “Joel owns it all. He owns the bigotry, he owns the
energy, and he makes him multi-dimensional. He did a brilliant interpretation.”
“I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”*
—Jordan Baker
A regular visitor at the Buchanans’ home and reveler at Gatsby’s parties,
socialite pro-golfer Jordan Baker is played by newcomer Elizabeth Debicki in her first
major movie role. Nick finds Jordan extremely elegant, beautiful…and profoundly
intimidating.
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